there's only so much I can turn into

[mswoods]

The thirteen-year-old girl is coming back home from school, on foot.

There's a cat following her. It's been following her for a while, but from a distance.

She decides to be friendly. She stops and turns around to look at it. It stops as well. "Mow?"

The girl's face- changes. It's still a human face, mostly, but now there's something different about it. More feline than anything. Whiskers grow, her pupils dilate and her eyes get a bit rounder, her bones move under her skin, their shape changing a bit. "Mew," she says, vocal apparatus having changed a bit, apparently.

The cat blinks and approaches cautiously. "Moow...?"

She doesn't giggle, but she feels like giggling. She's talking to a kitty! Well, kinda talking to a kitty, it's not like she can understand kitty-speech. But still! "Maw!"

Comments

[mrwoods]

"Okay. I guess I'm as ready as I can be within the constraints. Oh, actually-" He closes his eyes, he doesn't really need to but it helps with concentration. There's some shifting of stuff under his skin, and it barely takes a minute, but when he opens his eyes he pinches his arm and declares that "I cannot feel any pain now."

[taste_tester]

"That'll be one for the recordbooks."

She grabs him and gives him a chomp.

[mrprop]

At first, there is nothing. It's a pretty neat nothing, he doesn't even feel the pain of the chomp. That lasts a couple of hours. He reports this to Addy.

Then there is heat.

As his nerves start returning, he pokes at them from the inside, using his power's awareness. It's quite a curious feeling, and he can actually notice the venom working its way along his body. The way stuff changes, he suspects there's some genetic rewriting going on, which is absolutely fascinating.

As more nerves return, the heat starts becoming really uncomfortable, so he kills the nerves again. Yet they keep returning. He keeps killing them.

They return faster. And faster. He reports this with some alarm, and he reports that he's not quite able to keep up with them anymore. That's disappointing, but so far-



FIRE

He has no idea what has just happened, why there was a sudden return of all his nerves at the same time, but he was not prepared for it. He was not prepared to be seared from the inside, to be blindsided by such pain that he completely loses control of his body. When he opens his eyes again, he's lying on the ground, and he's sure they're lying to him, because they tell him the woods are not on fire, but they are, that's the only possible explanation.

He tries to kill his nerves again, but he can't. Or rather, he can, but they return as soon as he does that anyway.

He reports this to Addy between clenched teeth.

It has been three hours and twenty-seven minutes.

[taste_tester]

"Well, you get a truncated version, that's better than most people get," Addy says soothingly. "It'll all go away when you're done. You won't even be traumatized, it's neat."

[mrprop]

"I would not describe this as neat," he says, or maybe he screams, he's not quite sure anymore.

It gets worse.

And the worst part is that he can see it getting worse, he can see the venom working on changing him, so he knows, an instant before he feels it, just how bad the next second is going to be.

And the next.

And the next.

And the next.

Fire consumes. It does not create. It makes no sense. Addy lied to him, she must have, he's not becoming anything he's just dying. Maybe she killed him in his apartment and this is Hell, maybe there's a god and it's pissed off that he didn't donate more to charity, or it's really irritated about the way he got really rich using magic, or maybe it was all the pranks. Or befriending a mass murderer, maybe that was worse. In retrospect that was pretty bad, he's sure there's something he could have done to her when she told him this, anything that would have kept him out of this Hell. Maybe she'd have killed him anyway but he'd not be in Hell now.

He is no longer reporting anything to Addy.

It has been seven hours and forty-four minutes.

A part of his mind still remembers that she told him this would last three days, but that's ludicrous, he's certain he's been feeling this for at least a month, maybe two, except he's also certain it has very much not been half a day yet and he's not sure he can take over two and a half more days of this.

[taste_tester]

Addy hangs out, fiddling with her phone, whistling.

[mrprop]

It has been two days and something looks really wrong. Sadde does not look like he's two days along his transformation. He looks like it's only been a day.

[taste_tester]

"Are you fucking with your cosmetic features or are you just fighting the venom so hard that it's actually slowing down the whole process?"

[mrprop]

"Make it STOP make it go AWAY I don't WANT IT-"

Incoherent screaming.

[taste_tester]

"Sadde, if you haven't made it stop yet you're not going to. You're making it take longer."

[mrprop]

"I'm UNDOING, it's WORKING, I can SEE IT WORKING, if I'm fast enough-"

More incoherent screaming.

[taste_tester]

"You're not going to be fast enough. Speed it up instead, get it over with."

[mrprop]

He doesn't have anything to say to that. He just screams more.

He never begs for death. It doesn't occur to him that she'll have to kill him if he does in fact manage to revert it, though, so he does beg for that.

[taste_tester]

Addy continues waiting to see what sort of progress either way he'll make.

[mrsparkle]

His transformation lasts four days, three hours, seventeen minutes and nine seconds.

He doesn't fight it tooth and nail to the end; by the time his brain started getting noticeable boosts, he managed to argue himself out of fighting the transformation, and another hour later managed to argue his magic out of fighting the transformation. That was still not enough to make it faster overall.

[taste_tester]

"Finally," Addy says, when she hears his heart speed up.

[mrsparkle]

That last part is a bit faster than usual, but it doesn't change that much. He jumps, and he is:

overhwelmed.

He hears her voice - her voice is gorgeous, how could he have ever considered her face her most beautiful aspect when she had a voice like that - and he turns to look at her.

And he turns, it is immediate, he has thought and it has happened, no delay, no visual blur, just the desire and its outcome. Except not really, because he does also see everything in between, in full detail. But then he sees her, and he was wrong, she's so beautiful, her face might well be as beautiful as her voice, he was blind before as well as deaf-

The scent.

The scent.

He makes a noise he didn't know was possible, and he drinks.

[taste_tester]

Addy was kind enough to put it on ice for him, so it hasn't gone off.

"Feel better?" she asks, when he's emptied the buckets.

[mrsparkle]

"Yes," he says emphatically, and he's startled by his own voice. He laughs, and even his laughter is musical. "You didn't mention the expanded senses! Am I even using my magical cones-" He checks. "Nope, I'm not! They got burnt off! You could see ultraviolet all along!"

[taste_tester]

"I could, it's true! I usually use my pupils' powers more with them than I did with you, but my results would have been going off entirely the wrong baseline."

[mrsparkle]

"I can barely remember what happened then. Shit, eidetic memory's drowning out my human memories, you didn't tell me that!" He growls. How dare she hide this from him! He could've- done something, written stuff down, now he won't remember, what if he's forgotten, it's her fault, he should hurt her for it-

Nope. Nnnnoooope, he should not. He cuts the growl short, and startles himself into growling again, and then dissolves into a fit of giggles, which itself becomes loud laughter. That was hilarious!

[taste_tester]

"Oh yeah, that. Well, look, I didn't want to kill you. You'll remember anything really important."

[mrsparkle]

He nods a bit jerkily and thinks. Mum: Laura. Good. Last name: Woods, that's important, he's English. And...

There's just so much room, he can think so many things at the same time with almost arbitrary detail but why is everything so distracting fudging stupid vampire brain taking attention from everything and he's growling again but it's such a ridiculous notion that he starts laughing except who's this ducker laughing at him growl again oh wait it's him-

"How do you not get distracted by your own thoughts? Is everything going to-"

Food. He smells food and he's still so thirsty why does it burn wait the food's going away he has to go after it- Addy's there, she'll steal his food from him he should kill her no he shouldn't she'll kill him instead if he tries he growls and he bolts.

[taste_tester]

Addy chases him from a little ways back. Not close enough to make it look like she's planning to steal the food.

[mrsparkle]

He notices it, and draws the correct non-food-stealing conclusion. Good. Food stealing is bad, he'd hate to have to fight her.

He can hear his food, the delicious heartbeat, the-

He stops suddenly and holds his breath, then spins on his heels and darts directly away from where the food was.